


Details

by BurningTea



Series: Season 11 fic [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s11e21 All In The Family, M/M, based on sneak peek for s11e22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 07:49:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6896404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lucifer and Chuck fail to make headway in their family talk, Dean and Lucifer speak instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Details

**Author's Note:**

> Can't quite get my head around that sneak peek.

Cas wouldn’t sit like that, wouldn’t hold himself like that. Cas wouldn’t have his mouth set that way. 

Dean can’t help but list the differences, even as he tells them to use phrasing he’s heard on Dr Phil, and he’s never telling Sam quite how involved he’s gotten at times, with episodes where families are tearing into each other. The ‘I feel’ statements struck him as corny at the time, but they worked. 

If he had Cas back, he might even bring himself to use one of those statements. Might do. 

Lucifer throws his hands up as Chuck, as God, keeps pushing the blame anywhere as long as it doesn’t fall on the Almighty himself, and Dean thinks about the ways Cas uses his hands, about the grace and surety of it. Lucifer is brash and expansive, and even with the same hands the movements are too different. It jars.

Dean can’t understand how Lucifer fooled him so easily, so well. 

“You hear that, right?” Lucifer asks, and Dean misses the beat, lets Sam respond. 

It doesn’t take long after that for Chuck to stalk off, menacing in that bumbling way he has, as though he thinks they’re actually fooled by his mild-mannered human act, and Sam goes after him. Dean isn’t sure if it’s Sam’s faith driving him or that pragmatic side that shines through when things get tough, the side that winces when Dean insults the Creator. Well, fuck that. If Chuck didn’t want calling on his crap, he should have taken care not to have any. Not like he can use the defense of not knowing. 

Instead, Dean finds himself with Lucifer, alone. 

“Well, this isn’t awkward at all,” Dean says, shifting his feet as though he’s going to stand. 

He doesn’t end up going anywhere. He can feel Lucifer looking at him, and it makes him itch and jitter. They’re the right eyes, but the wrong gaze, the wrong way of looking. Cas looked into him. Lucifer just looks through. 

“How you holding up?” Lucifer asks, for all the world like Dean and he are best friends who haven’t caught up in a while. “You doing okay? Must be tough, seeing all this.” He pulls a face, his mouth twisting into a curving line, and shrugs. “Drama.”

“Not my first rodeo,” Dean says, and closes his right around the space that should contain a beer bottle. 

Drinking around God he could just about justify. It’s hard to shake the image of Chuck in a tatty bathrobe from his mind, even though he knows, now, what he’s dealing with, and Chuck came on board to help. Possibly. Hell, the guy’s twisted Dean’s life six ways from Sunday, even if as much by neglect as anything else, but Dean’s not a stranger to that style of parenting, and he has saved them more than once. Apparently. But Lucifer? 

“I didn’t for a minute think it was,” Lucifer says, and winks. 

Winks.

“Did you just wink at me?” Dean asks, because some things shift a step outside of reality, and the Devil winking at him, in his own home, while wearing his best friend, is one of them. 

“Oh, come on,” Lucifer says, and tilts his head. His hands still grip his shin, holding his leg in place where it’s crossed over the other one. The whole image is faintly ridiculous. “You think I can’t spot someone who knows his way around a cowboy?”

“Shut up,” Dean tries. 

“You, er, you ever try riding this bronco?” Lucifer asks, and he lets go of that leg, plants both feet firmly on the ground, and leans towards Dean. “You don’t tell me, I could always go and ask him.”

“Leave Cas out of it,” Dean says. 

Lucifer pulls another face.

“I suppose you’re right. Doubtful I’d get through to him, anyway. He’s snug as a bug in here, all wrapped up in his thoughts and his TV shows. I’ve got to let you in on a secret, Dean.” His voice drops to something approaching a whisper. “The little guy’s not the most balanced of wheels right now. I thought he was peculiar when I saw him back at our last game, but now he’s tipped right over the edge.”

Game. Right. The ending the world thing. It’s almost worse when Lucifer plays things down. It strips everyone else of their perspective. 

“Cas isn’t peculiar,” Dean says. “Anyway, he’s good peculiar.”

“Hmm. Not so much. Not right now.”

Lucifer stands and stretches, craning his neck and sighing.

“Welp, I’m headed to bed,” he says. “Staring into the dark has to be more interesting than listening to you pray. You get that I hear them all, right? Every sad little longing and desperate plea.”

He lifts a hand and waves it near his temple.

“This is full of static, and then there’s you, droning on and on and on, begging Castiel to come back to you, to explain himself, to be here. I gotta tell you, it stopped being entertaining weeks ago. And the sad thing?” Lucifer pauses and looks up, as though he’s considering what counts as the saddest part of this. “Well, the saddest part might just be that he doesn’t even hear you. Not really. All that longing? It’s not coming through as you loving him. No. He just feels you want something, and it rips right into him that he can’t get it for you. Broken angel doesn’t even realise you just want him.”

Dean stares up at Lucifer, whose expression still sits this side of amiable. He isn’t sure he can move. A cold sweat prickles at his skin and his breaths are too loud in his own ears.

“If I could find another vessel to contain me, well, maybe I’d leave this one,” Lucifer says. “Can’t say for sure. It’s a strong vessel. Dad crafted it himself. But, if it meant not having to listen to the love notes… Still, can’t say how much of him there’d be left to come back to you.”

Another stretch, and this time Lucifer holds eye contact with Dean the whole time.

“Of course, I could pretend to be him, if you’d like.”

And he winks again.

Dean feels his jaw clench. He refuses to look away. 

“No?” Lucifer manages to look faintly disappointed. “As you wish. You change your mind, you let me know. I’m going to pretend to be a good human and lie down on a bed for a few hours. Maybe Dad’ll warm to me if I play Castiel’s trick and go native. Sleep tight, Dean.”

The Devil turns and leaves, not seeming to care that Dean’s frozen in place, watching him walk. Cas doesn’t walk like that. Cas doesn’t…

Cas doesn’t hear him. Lucifer just said it. Cas doesn’t hear Dean’s prayers.

The Devil could be lying. He could. But… But Cas doesn’t believe Dean wants him, not just for him. Cas doesn’t believe that have Cas around is worth more than any plan, than any super-nuke, sacrificial plan. 

Cas doesn’t hear Dean, so Dean can’t tell him how he feels.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think, as always. Comments are much appreciated.


End file.
